#if i had homestuck friends when i was younger... it would be so over for y'all

[divineerdrick]

Homestuck: Beyond Canon Upd8 for 413

Happy 413 everyone! We knew we were getting something today, as James announced that earlier. This time, it's an extensive news posts with notes from the whole team. Looks like we've got a few comic pages as well. Let's see what we got!

James: I can definitely relate to what James is saying. Homestuck and its community helped me keep going when it seemed like there genuinely wasn't a path forward. Obviously it hasn't always been sunshine and rainbows, but I do still feel there is a lot of genuine goodness and greatness in our little corner of the internet.

And yay! James is an Aradia fan!

Kim:

Kim is one of the people who grew up with this comic. I honestly can't imagine what that must be like. Although I had a lot of media I enjoyed at 13, I don't feel like any of it had the kind of impact on me then that Homestuck had now. It's not like there wasn't anything good on, either! It was 1993 when I was 13, and WB and Disney were at their apex. But Homestuck hit different. I honestly can't imagine what it was like being able to relate to those kids like they could be your friends in another life, growing up along side them.

Miles:

A beautiful mindfuck is a great way to describe it. Honestly the somewhat over the top, trollish, insincere seeming way that Miles is writing shows a great love for Homestuck and the project in and of itself. The love honestly does come through.

Chumi:

Chumi appears to be even younger than Kim, though I could be wrong there. And she also grew up with it, if maybe starting a couple of years into its run. But it goes a step further for her. Homestuck is her formative fandom. And again, I can't imagine what that must be like, let alone now creating art for it.

Andi:

Andi is another member of the team to have grown up alongside Homestuck. It makes sense that this would create the most talented and passionate people to work on the project. Like many fans, though, they also had Homestuck influence their identity and help them feel safe in discovering who they were. It will always be important we have people like them keeping this fandom alive.

floralmarsupial:

While the way Homestuck inspired me was different, she too was drawn in and influenced by the very artistic questions Homestuck posed. Looks like James has managed to put together a team that has all been impacted by Homestuck in subtly different ways. And I'm totally here for it!

Haven:

Oh wow! Coming in on Murderstuck! Ouch! Still, the effect Homestuck has had on them is very obvious!

It's nice to hear more from each voice behind the project. I'm glad they took the time to make this celebration a bit more personal. But with all that said and done, it's time to read an Upd8!

There is so much to talk about just from this image.

First off, this is the most like Bro that Dirk has ever looked. And it's not just the fact that we've just got a plain white silhouette with shades. There is a lot of chaos in this panel reminiscent of Bro's apartment. That outfit has absolutely never looked wackier. The anime ninja aesthetics combined with the pooffiness of those shorts is already crazy. But the Kamina cape in this looks more cliché villain than anime hero.

While we can't currently see one of the monitors, we absolutely can see that Dirk has been keeping track of our Meat crew. My guess is that the other monitor is Deltritus.

Also we get a throwback with some orange drinks floating about.

Dirk is, of course, being suitably condescending here. After all, in his mind this is the only way to make the narrative matter, to make anything that we'll give a shit about. He probably knows we still enjoy the "narrative kiddy pool" but he's counting on us truly getting invested in what he has planned.

Wow! Nice frame break! Also this art slaps!

Apparently Rose and Terezi are still a thing. Dirk only seems to partially approve of this. From his perspective, the relationship is a very Rose thing to do. And Rose doing Rose things is important to him and his plans. He also appreciates that Rose doesn't have infinite patience for the finetuning that Dirk could spend a literal eternity on. It keeps him on something resembling a schedule.

So are we going to see these "scions" of theirs?

I like that there's an obvious sea horse in that test tube. Also, outside of Hero mode Dirk is still sporting his character features at least. He hasn't slipped into being a full guardian yet.

Well fuck. That might just be the hardest anyone has ever "spoken too soon."

Hell yes! Adult Terezi is awesome! Also, she's not getting rid of her facial features any time soon!

I hope I didn't jinx that . . .

I'd forgotten Terezi can hear Dirk's narrative. She's also very much on the "Get on with it!" train. Dirk was planning to skip ahead anyway, but of course he wants to unveil his creation first.

So Terezi will be the one that actually makes sure the new session happens. I'm surprised Dirk is allowing that. I can definitely get why he doesn't want it automated.

I can honestly believe that Dirk really does care about his creation.

And I can honestly see Terezi playing the long game. I'm honestly curious why she wouldn't, beside Dirk's fuckery.

Ouch.

Also, damn this art is so fucking good!

We've seen the way Terezi can let what she sees as a mistake eat at her. We've seen how far she'll go to fix it. Is John's death doing that to her? Is even this older, seemingly more jaded Terezi unable to let something like that go even with what's at stake?

Or could she possibly be letting Dirk think that's what's going on? I really kinda hope that's it.

Now that's just being mean pretending you don't know what she meant by being in her "CH4MB3RS", Dirk.

Apparently Dirk still has a mouth when he needs to.

FUCKING!!!

DAMN!!!

That's an interesting way of showing them speaking at the same time. Kinda like it.

Okay. That is some legitimate Bullshit. I like that even Dirk calls it out as such. That is a ton of power to just flex like that. His reasoning is sound, but even he knows he's partly doing it because he can.

Wow.

There is so much to potentially read into this moment. On the one had, this might be a genuine Rose moment. Even if Dirk has been manipulating her a lot, this version of Rose might genuinely be appreciative of what they're trying to do.

The other possibility is that Rose is manipulating Dirk this time. There've been hints, and I find it hard to believe otherwise, the Rose is aware Dirk has been manipulating her somehow. She may not have figured out how he's doing it, but I feel she knows. As an ascended Seer of Light, her ability to read the most fortuitous path is literally godlike. I can't imagine that definition of fortune including one where she keeps losing more and more agency. So this might be a moment where she's telling Dirk what he needs to hear to stop him from stealing more from her.

The worst part is he genuine believes that.

[contradictory-equivalence]

welc&me 2 my bl&g we like c&ntr&dicti&nz & l&t here i c&n't be expected 2 expl&in &ll &f them. ezpeci&lly the 1z th&t zuck.

i d&ubt y&u c&n be t&& weird i me&n the b&r iz actu&lly pretty high d&n't w&rry

g&&d luck with the br&nd new z&ci&l life dude.

y&u &in't th&t c&&l.

n&t regrubbing th&t but it w&uld zeem r iz zlutting me &ut &z & tech guy &g&in. re&lly c&&l &f y&u r&&nz. h&pe ur spectrum h&ting &zz kn&wz h&w th&t c&uld be zeen.

[kabutoden]

Every time I show my friend ur art he says "this guy watched Invader Zim as a kid"

HAHAHA XD that uh totally delights me. like that youd share my art and they recognize that!! i actually didn't watch ANY invader zim as a younger kid, we were too poor for tv networks growing up and internet fast enough to watch video didn't reach my area til i was in the fifth grade, i think. I had a super edgy era when I was 16, i think? Got really into invader zim and jhonen's other works. So yeah he's totally right LOLLL

Back when I first got into homestuck again as an adult, my first idea was to make an episodic fanfic where each of the trolls attempts to take over the world with a different stupid, STUPID plan. It was up to the beta kids to stop them. As troll was defeated, they'd settle down around the area and would be living their lives in the background, and might help interfere with the next invader's plans for their own reasons. I ended up wanting to focus on less characters, and after a bunch of stuff happened I ended up with Aphids. The inspiration is sooo there though.

I love it when Irkens are mentioned existing in fanfics about trolls in the background. It's like when metroid and kirby show up as the same universe, its so funny to me. Idk if Irk is cannon to any bugstuck though--i'd love to make my old kirby works cannon to bugstuck, but the physics and rules of the universes are too different.

[osterby]

Baldur's Gate 3, via Osmosis

So I think I played the first Baldur's Gate game for like an hour at a friend's house back in college, and all I remember about it was how delighted I was by the miniature giant hamster. I didn't even know there was a second game until I started hearing people get excited about the third one. That's about the sum of my knowledge of this franchise.

So without more ado, here's what my tumblr dash has taught me about these blorbos (I got @malaloba to huck the screenshots at me, so I didn't spoil myself on the names)

I want to say this one is Shadowheart, but that's too on the nose. She's probably .... Mythrin... Mithras... Mithotyn... Nope, I haven't got it.

She looks grouchy, and like she has a very good reason to be grouchy, and I would assume she's a combat class from her armour, but that's all I've got.

Gale (or Halsin) I know this one! He's the one who turns into a bear in The Cutscene that broke the internet for a few days. That means he'd be a Druid, right? I think he cross classes or something, though.

I hope the furries are having a great time drawing him as an anthro bear with a very large weenie.

Astarion! This vampire twink was all over my dash long before the game was released. Apparently he has a tragic backstory and is a jerk about it in a way that is either annoying or endearing, depending on the player's opinion of vampire twinks. His main role in the game, however, seems to be comically failing to pick locks. This means he's a Thief. Apparently the thing with the bear just had Astarion as the player character, and he isn't canonically dating the bear guy. Oh well.

Halsin (or Gale) The Other One who is Not a Bear. I would have said Bard for his class, but he's glowing a bit much for that here, so maybe a caster? I feel like he's more popular in areas of Tumblr that don't cross my dash.

Karlach or Karlak or something (not Karkat, that's a Homestuck thing).

Lesbians love her! She is large and angry and apparently really easy to romance just by approving of her chopping things with her axe. I think she was a child soldier? I see a lot of jokes about her crappy ex. I think her ex is actually her god and not her ex, though. Anyway, she seems like a prototypical Barbarian, good for her.

EDIT: I just remembered that she has PLAGUE, and is on a quest to Stop Having Plague. This is apparently her ex's fault

Laz'el. Lae'zel. La'zael. Something along those lines. I've seen treatises on her backstory and characterization, and she sounds like a really interesting character. Grew up in a cult of some kind, got dead or something, got abandoned by a crappy god (who might have also gotten dead or something), and is now wandering around trying to figure out how to exist in a world that isn't a cult. Apparently Other Players don't like her and dont't get what's up with her, which is a sore point for her fans (It's very possible that I'm mixing up portions of her backstory and fan reception with Karlach's) Her nose weirds me out (some uncanny valley thing between a skeleton lack-of-nose and a nose-nose), but I think she's pretty neat.

Ok, so if the blue lady at the top of this post isn't Shadowheart, then this one is Shadowheart. When I first saw the name Shadowheart, I thought it was someone's OC, and then I thought it was a generic name for the player character. From what I can gather, she's Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way with the stupid scraped off. She seems to be younger than most the other characters; she and the red tiefling are the kiddos of the group (Astarion doesn't count, because vampire). I think she grew up all sheltered in a weird little cult, too. Did ALL these characters grow up in weird cults? Is that a theme? Did I hear one backstory and apply it to a dozen different characters?

I happen to know for sure that this guy's name is Wyll. Good for me.

I don't know beans about him but I suspect he might be my favourite character when I do finally get around to playing, just from how his peronality is conveyed in fanart.

I get the impression he's the Only Sane Man to all these characters who grew up in cults and divorced dead gods and got vampire'd and whatnot, but he also has horns in like half the fanart and screenshots and is clearly Haunted (metaphorically, figuratively, literally, probably all of the above), so who knows.

As for the second figure here, I know the premise of the game is you've all got brainworms, who are in leage with a mindflayer con man who you can bone but who is also running some sleezy marketing scam, so maybe that's the brainworm made manifest?

I also see a lot of talk about character called Dark Urge, and the fan art doesn't look like that, but if Dark Urge is a manifested brainworm, then it could take various forms.

[the-meat-machine]

The homestuck age poll rb is crazy because Im pretty sure i got into homestuck sometime in 2015 when i was 12, waaaaaaay too young to be reading it. I think the comic was definitely aimed at young adults for the obvious reasons of the amount of cursing and sexual humor. Homestuck always reminded me of sitting at a school lunch table, a bunch of not so supervised kids hanging out doing whatever. But I think homestuck is written more as a reminisce of childhood rather than living through it of you catch my drift. I think thats why it was such a massive appeal to different age groups, older and younger audiences find it relatable and entertaining. But then again i remember picking up a physical copy of the book and it apparently said it was rated +16, like ok if you say so

Yeah, I agree that it's written more from a perspective of nostalgia for childhood than as something kids are necessarily meant to read. Which amusingly results in a comic whose main characters are "too young" to read it if you go by the rating, haha.

And honestly, I think that 16+ sounds like about the right rating for it. Like, I'm not gonna say kids SHOULDN'T be reading Homestuck, because I definitely read some pretty "adult" books at that age.* But I think it's more appropriate for older teens than for, well, 12-year-olds.

Really, I'm pretty sure the original intended audience -- or at least expected audience -- were people who were in their 20s when Homestuck first started in 2009. Probably people who grew up playing text-based and point-and-click adventure games. People who had lots of nostalgia for 80s movies. People with online friends that they communicated with over AOL Instant Messenger, which Pesterchum is an obvious pastiche of.

Because, really, a lot of the references characters make throughout the comic are to media from Hussie's childhood, rather than media that someone who was 13 in 2009 would have been likely to care about. The entire conceit of MSPA in general, where the audience (and later some imagined reader/player) is giving "commands" to the characters, is based off of old school adventure games. And especially in early Homestuck, Hussie made no real effort to make the comic accessible to people who aren't at least passingly familiar with most of that stuff I mentioned.

So I think it says a lot about Homestuck's strengths that it evolved to appeal to all sorts of people outside of that original demographic! That even if a lot of the references go over your head, there's still so much to like about the characters and the plot and the world that it doesn't even matter. That's really cool, I think.

* Based on the title, the Schrödinger's Cat trilogy sounded right up 12-year-old-me's alley. How was I supposed to know how obscenely raunchy it was? Turned out it was bad enough that I quickly decided I wasn't old enough for it and came back to it a couple years later (which was arguably still too young for a book where a major subplot revolves around a character's severed penis)

[dreamsofalifeold]

((It's...honestly any wonder it took me until last year to realize I have ocd. It runs in my family heavily, and looking back on the stuff I used to do and say all the time as a younger person??? Like I genuinely thought I was going to Hell for having to crush on a married actor because that was "practically committing adultery". I am not religious.

Once when I was 16, I had severe intrusive thoughts about a mountain lion living in the woods by my house. I was convinced I was going to die, to the point I didn't leave my house for a week. I didn't look out windows at night for years because I just knew that I'd see a creepypasta monster and it would see me and I'd walk out to embrace it, never being seen again.

I thought that EVERYONE had thoughts they couldn't control or get rid of; as young as six, I'd have intrusive thoughts about being in the open ocean with sharks eating me, or being locked in the gym storage room over the weekend and dying. I did these weird, obsessive rituals where I'd go over what I would do if a cobra got into our house or if I found a venomous spider in the shower.

I only really figured it out thanks to, of all things, a Homestuck au comic. One of the characters has ocd and I found myself basically repeating her exact thought processes; "I have to do xyz in this order or it means I don't love this person enough." THAT'S when it hit me and about 90% of my life made sense. One of my friends even said she thought I knew already.

Anyway, that's my whole journey to realization. Idk why I wrote this stream of consciousness, but it is Munday and I am the mun, so...))

[vergess]

TS4 blogging

There's technical in fandom terminology for all of this but I don't know it, sorry for being a cringefailwaifu or what have you.

I am trying to keep a family alive for 10 generations of short lifespans. This is a known style of play, but IDK the word.

Anyway, I'm on Gen 7, it's going so good, I just wanted to note everything down before I forget.

Gen 1 (founding family):

I decided to populate the world with rainbow pastel sims, and began play with a werewolf version of @arionwind, who ultimately bred out with a pink pastel sim. Conveniently, because werewolves can achieve immortal status, this Ari sim is still alive.

Meanwhile, the pink sim turned out to be a witch, a genetic trait allowing the character to use cheat codes "in universe" as magic.

This meant all children would be either genetic witches or genetic werewolves.

Gen 2 (banananananana):

The first child of G1 would ultimately be our throughline. Because of my exceedingly, violently modified game settings, this one came out a trans man autonomously on age up, so that's fun. Although born with human skin, I modified him to have pastel yellow, beginning a trend throughout the subsequent generations of picking a theme color for all of the kids skin, hair and eyes in a generation. All other genetics were left unmodified.

His name was Syrene and he was the first one to be named Serrano as well. A real trendsetter, he determined a lot of things about future generations' play styles.

He also had 7 children, including 2 sets of twins. My man was Never Not Pregnant.

He was so happy about being a parent that he funded the family money tree, which rapidly became the primary source of income in the game. A money tree is a garden object you can buy with reward points for making your sim happy. At higher levels, it pays 22,500 dollars a day.

He personally funded 3 of them.

Cheerful as fuck.

Gen 3 (grape):

Ultimately I elected to follow the youngest of the younger set of twins, Rori. Her twin, Augustin, was the last natural born werewolf in the family line, as he never had children himself. However, he remained Rori's close friend throughout her life.

Rori sired many children in her life as a world travelling magical duelist, and ultimately raised a handful of them while paying double child support to the rest.

Gen 4 (bluet):

The 5th of Rori's children, a retiring homebody who ran off to a rural village when she got pregnant. She spent her life making Unusually Strong Potions due to sims of this generation and later having the Ancient Bloodline trait. She also raised llamas and kitted a lot.

A very chill woman overall, which makes the Dramatics of her child... impressive.

Gen 5 (brown on brown IDK she was born very pretty but not very fruity):

Maricela Serrano, you beautiful bitch.

Maricela died at her adult birthday of Having Too Much Fun, a known cause of death in the game.

She had recently, as in the day before, finished marrying her wife, Sidney Lalonde, of the Newcrest Lalondes (when I first populated the game in gen 1, I put in a homestuck house on an unused map and forgot about it entirely until this point).

Because both were born with the double fertility trait (heavily modded game!) both of them were able to sire and carry children over the course of their engagement, and ultimately they had 6 children together. And oh man, what children they were, raised by the ghost of a dead mom, and an Actual Lunatic Immortal Witch because oops somewhere along the way Sydney drank an immortality potion.

Gen 6 (peachy teens!):

The eldest, Romeo. The twins Viola and Sebastien. The twins Lady and Othello. And the youngest, Ariel.

Of them, Ariel quickly seemed the loveliest and the most worth pursuing genetically, however, Ariel proved the first of a dramatic calamity about to befall the family line.

Although both Maricela and Sidney were witches, Ariel proved to have no magical ability. So I set them up to be a comedy focused NPC and moved on to Othello.

Othello was an over acheiver (which is a type of teenager you can play, with specific goals) who quickly graduated high school and entered college as a teen, a thing I did not know you could do in this game until he did it.

This is of critical importance.

He went to college and on the FIRST. NIGHT. AFTER. CLASS.

He died of studying too much in the library. His brain exploded into computer symbols.

In addition to not knowing teens could go to college I also did not know they could die.

I relented to my next backup, Lady. Lady is a mean, evil, romantic sim and almost immediately dies of being too angry, another known cause of death in the game.

I am rapidly running out of peachy teens!!!!!!

I fall back to Romeo, who is at this point an adult with the goal of becoming world famous, so I make him an actor and off we go.

As part of the bit, I have him sire as many kids as possible. Every time an NPC asks to date him, he knocks them up and breaks up with them immediately. He did this himself the first 2 times, but I make it an enforced rule from then on.

He gets world famous, becomes old, and decides to meet his many children.

Gen 7 (cherry red and spring green):

All of Romeo's children were born without magic, so I picked the prettiest one and had her run away to live at the beach. She became a mermaid because I think they are pretty.

She lived an extremely uninteresting life of being a B list youtuber and raising her only child, a daughter she had via IVF with her best friend from high school.

Super chill, very normal.

Gen 8 (strawberry pink and dark green):

No idea why her child came out human and evil, but that happened. Anyway, while bringing Romeo's gravestone to the family graveyard, Sidney (the immortal Lalonde) was just like, "hey Siobhan, stand still, you're a witch now."

So I guess my vague plans of making her be a vampire are over, since you can only be one kind of magic thing at a time.

But she can still be a supervillain so that's fun!

And that's where we're at.

[skybluesocks]

Hi I don't know what the fuck im talking about here is a weirdly personal ramble about Tavros from my homestuck rotten brain I sent my friends from the fucking hairdresser:

Im having such complex thoughts on tavros while the pink dye is being applied so I put them here rather than subject my poor hairstylist to them: im just thinking about how like, he's a "late bloomer" so to say. Like, he still plays childish games, he's obsessed with fairies and pupa pan and games. His life sucks, and just keeps going downhill, and it makes him retreat into these sources of escapism, but its not actually solving the problem. I think about him telling Jade "the only fun I ever had playing this game is when I was asleep" a lot. He's a heartbreak feeling left behind by your peers. I see a lot of 20 such year olds freaking out over how they have friends getting married and having careers, but its also something so entrenched in puberty. You feel left behind socially as kids around you start getting their owns complexes to disregard and abandon "childish" things. This is seen so many times, a lot in Vriska but also a lot of the other trolls and even the kids, and a lot of them expressthis *to Tavros* . But tavros doesn't abandon this things, they're like, the best things in his life. Like, ni wonder he didn't know what to do when vriska kissed him, or when gamzee offered to make out, I would have had the same reaction at that age. Meanwhile I have heard people directly talk to me in 8th grade about having make out session in previous years. This doesn't have a point, im just having a lot of thoughts I can even imagine how long this is by now oh boy I guess its also like, I know I keep hammering home how the story seems to forget how young its own characters are, but tavros very much feels his age.

Yeah anyways I may be unpacking further why I relate (me at 13) to tavros. I was always friends people younger than me, I was into "childish" things, absolutely massive prude, I didn't even start my period until 8th grade. I understand how he's feeling, especially being pushed so much by vriska to grow up. She has that part talking about how he's always too late. Sorry "l8" "too l8 to kiss me. Too l8 to kill me." And everything she does doesnt work, if anything it does the opposite. She says she wants to make him stronger, but she's the reason he's disabled. She wants him to grow a spine, to fight back at her, but all of her lashing out only tears him down more, she wants him to kill her when she ascends to godhood, but he can't and its implied he was ashamed and horrified and he slept so much to escape thinking about it. He's falling behind, and he's not able to help his team the same way, I won't deny that, but can you *really* blame him? Hes a sad, scared, lonely kid, and his life frankly kinda sucks my poor little meow meow out in the rain. But like yes he does very little to actually fight back and improve his situation. He's very passive, things really just happen to him. Wow ok for surface level tavros is my son, but also he *is* pretty annoying, but also he's me at 13, but also a wet cat in the rain and its a lite his fault but thats gonna be a whole other tangent becauseI haven't even gotten into how well he maintainsa smile, but also fuck vriska a little bit, she's **really** not helping

[fern717]

i know the person who made the above post had good intentions, but the statement they are making here is a harmful one and i want to talk about why that is.

first of all, “neurodivergent” describes anyone who’s brain develops differently from what is considered the norm. this includes not only autistic people and people with adhd, but people with ocd, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, and other conditions. the things that are being called “superpowers” in the above tweet are typically brought up when discussing specifically autism and adhd. using the term “neurodivergency” here reinforces the idea that autism and adhd is all that neurodivergence is. 

now, onto the part that caused me the most irritation: describing traits shown in autistic people and people with adhd as “superpowers.”

earlier today i was in pain because my mom was putting the plates away and the sounds they were making when they touched each other hurt. i can get so overwhelmed in loud places or around large groups of people that i struggle to speak. when i focus too much on the textures of certain foods, i feel sickish. those things are not superpowers. they are all simply things that i have to deal with because i am more sensitive to sensory inputs because of the way my brain is wired.

my sensitivity to sensory inputs also has benefits. i appreciate comfy blankets and nice smells more because i can feel them with more intensity than others. since my senses are heightened, not only is my discomfort from certain sensory inputs heightened, but my appreciation and enjoyment from others is as well!

my deep focus on my interests (among other social difficulties) led to me being a target for bullying for a large portion of my time at school. people found me annoying because i was so enthusiastic about the things i loved, so they would pretend to want to be my friend or to be interested in the things i liked as a joke to amuse their real friends. it was funny to them because they found the idea of someone actually wanting to talk to or spend time with me to be ridiculous. eventually, i began to agree with them. even now, there are times when i still struggle to understand why anyone would want to spend time engaging with me. my self esteem is incredibly low. eventually i learned to not express enthusiasm about or excitement for things that i liked while at school.

my deep focus on my interests also has benefits. when i get really into a piece of media, i often create characters based around it, which helps foster my creativity. my parents often ask me questions about pokémon when they’re playing pokémon go because i was really into pokémon when i was younger and, as such, know a lot about the characters and rules and am able to help them with the game. if it wasn’t for the intense interest i had in homestuck back in 2019, i wouldn’t have met my best friend of four (going on five) years! my intense interest in certain topics has had some negatives consequences, but it has had many positive ones as well.

it’s irritating and hurtful to see people treat autistic people and people with adhd like we’re going through such tragedy because of the struggles that we face due to the way we function. however, putting us on a pedestal and acting as if we’re so impressive and strong due to the benefits our neurodivergence gives us just puts unfair expectations on us and minimizes the difficulties we face. everyone has strengths and difficulties, but when the person who has them is neurodivergent, it seems that neurotypical people don’t know how to acknowledge them in a manner that isn’t over-the-top in one way or another. that gets really tiring. 

[groggygrimalkin]

TW SA and Abuse,long heavy personal post

I guess I'm in a sappy mood so I'll talk about why Homestuck means so much to me. For a year I've kinda wanted to make a video about it, and maybe I will, but for now I just wanna talk abt it. I'm not tagging this as hs but serious trigger tag ahead please tell me if you want to tag this as anything

Okay so I got into Homestuck around 2011, I was being pretty heavily abused by my grandma and mom and also neglected by them which is a very weird ass combo, but a story about someone playing a game and having such close friends appealed to me (I also thought Homestuck was an anime before finding the comic and would look up like "Homestuck episode 1" and get mad when I couldnt find it lmao). Now keep in mind I was a child so like media literacy wasn't my strong suit but I still retained and understood a good ammount of stuff mainly about characters. Anyways as a child naturally does I started talking about it with all of my friends and tried to get them into it, and one friend got REALLY into it. The best I can describe it is like that episode of the Cuphead show where Mugman likes piano and Cuphead gets into it and immediately overshadows him. But I was still happy to have someone to talk about it with. My favorite characters at the time were Meulin, Nepeta, and Damara and I would happily talk about them, but the person would shit on me for liking Meulin claiming she was a bad person and constantly pointing out all her flaws, it annoyed me because they're favourite characters had TONS of flaws they didn't acknowledge but for some reason me loving Meulin was the worst thing ever. I also loved the Midnight Crew and later to my chagrin they did too. I kept reading as updates came out and soon Homestuck became their entire thing, I remember going over their house because at a certain point they were my only friend and they talked to me about Homestuck like I didn't introduce them to it. But yknow, okay, whatever. We would ship our ocs with Canon characters and pretend to be characters and stuff, pretty standard until one day they came over my house and insisted on being Dualscar. They wrote a fic about him doing it with one of my ocs and I was just kinda happy for the attention. Anyways we were rping in real life and I don't remember when, or how, but they had me pinned to the couch and were insistent I let them touch me because we were role-playing and they were Dualscar. Now I've always lowkey been ace, especially in my younger years, so I was pretty uncomfortable, and even if I wasnt asexual someone having you pinned down insisting on touching you when you're not consenting isnt a fun time. Anyways they did stuff like this a few times more in various places and would get mad when I said no to their advances. But for some reason I kept hanging out with them. They were gross and rude and pushy but the only friend I had. I remember them basically assigning me Diamonds Droog kin which I didn't care because I liked Droog(still do) and would pretend to be Slick and suprise suprise would try and molest me. I began to get bitter towards Homestuck, something I once loved was being used against me in one of the worst ways possible. It was a weird time because I would just begrudgingly read the updates I once loved. Anyways when I was 15 they molested me again and it was the worst one, like I wouldn't let my family members hug me for years type of bad. I remember the exact video I was watching when it happened, Game grumps playing Silent Hills PT. I couldn't watch that video for years after. I also remember them showing me really fucked up porn between characters and when I asked like "Hey isn't that weird?" They did the ol' "Ugh it's just fictional!!" Sheit. Anyways at a certain point Homestuck was just ruined for me. I finished it just to say I did and when people asked me if I liked it I would lie and say I didn't. Thankfully I broke it off with them after nine fucking years of knowing eachother. For years I continued to say I dislike homestuck until I got like 22...I stumbled upon Hiveswap and it was funny all of the troll and Alternia facts I could remember, I was hesitant at first and was still like "Ugh but I don't REALLY like it!!" And then I saw....Them....

It was a weird feeling accepting that "Yep I like Homestuck I've been lying to myself for years" and I bought friendsim. I was hooked emmediately. It was like a flood of love I had for homestuck when I started in 2011 all came rushing back, the person who hurt me didn't matter, all that mattered is that I was enjoying it again. Tbh like alot of stuff from my first read was sort of still in my mind, so I stuck to watching recap videos and reading segments I couldnt remember and holy shit there was so much I missed as a child. And then I got Hiveswap and BAM I'm hooked even more, and then

AND THEN...

I rewatched and re-read the first intermission...

And it was set in stone that I'm a Homestuck at heart. It was like walking into a bar I hadn't been to in years and all of my old friends were there to welcome me, I was enjoying something again that used to bring me so much comfort before it was ruined for me, but it didn't have to be anymore. I think I sobbed when I realized that. It feels nice to enjoy something that for years was soured for me.

Uh yeah that's why homestucka and hiveswap means so much to me. Opening this blog has been an amazing way for me to get into the fandom which I never have before. I'll probably be an old man talking about leprechauns and trolls but I'll be happy.

[starpuncher]

so i've been doing some yaoi archaeology recently regarding mid 2010s homestuck fandom. presumably we've all been there and the audience is still with me.

what's striking to me about perusing these ancient cave drawings is how differently i experience them in the present compared to my impression of them in the past, at 12-15, which i felt at the time was significantly younger than both homestuck's target audience and the fandom population at large. my memory of homestuck fandom is that it was this bottomless cornucopia of incredible fanart; i've said to friends in conversation that i didn't think i would ever see a fandom with artistic output like that again in my lifetime. on reflection, though. on reflection, by which i mean a series of blog crawls through fanart archives going back over a decade, i may have been somewhat mistaken, and also thirteen years old. it turns out that to an untrained eye all fanart is equally incredible; there are pieces i remember as masterpieces that i now view (fondly!) as... kinda bad. this isn't a flex, it's just weird to realize that i surpassed 90% of my 13 year old art idols back in college. even as the eye improves, memory preserves amateur yaoi as comparable to an enlightenment masterpiece. then again, my memory sucks.* modern trigun fandom's output is probably more artistically on par with what i remember homestuck being, and even then not quite there.

due to tumblr's salted earth policy towards tits i can't say how much of the pervert aspect of homestuck fandom was true to my teenage recollection, but what scraps remain aren't super far off. based on limited records it SEEMS to have been both hornier and at once less (broad gesture towards the western slash hentai flavor of nonconsent)(a different beast entirely than yaoi nonconsent trust me there are different artistic movements at play here, influencing one another asymmetrically) than i remember. the layers of secondhand midwestern christianity continue to peel. i wouldn't describe my teenage self as being scared of sex/averse to internet porn as a rule, and yet interpreting what seems to have been a generally sex-positive fanart as notably debauched has a distinctive aroma of that mild psychosis. while the, uh, choices in ships were, hm, certainly more varied (the coward's description), the particulars of the fanart were fairly in line with modern fandom ship content (note: on several blogs, even what's been wiped retains hints in the tags applied to what are now blank images) (additional note: the author is considering the output of twitter fujoshis as constituting a broader slice of 'modern fandom ship content' than may be accurate).

whump, like actual no bullshit whump, is what i most notice as present in past fandom, now extinct beyond its most watered-down subtypes. think diary comics about depression. trigun volume 10 and the fanart it's spawned hurt, yeah, but that's a tragedy. that's a narrative. maybe (MAYBE) it's a positive indicator for the health of the larger organism that i don't see fanart of anime boy self-harm anymore. but i doubt it. i think gore fanartists still exist, in theory? gore as a focus is to me a different category than fanart with gore as an artistic inclusion. guts mean different things spilling out of what is essentially a blank canvas than they do when they belong to, i dunno, that pink bitch from jujutsu kaisen. what the fuck was his name. jujutsu kaisen is one of several recent shounen serializations that reflect a trend towards more overt gore/body horror/aesthetic grimdarkness in the mainstream, occurring parallel to the broader fandom retreat from similar visceral pain (and blood and guts and all that). i'm off topic. gore is itself different from whump, and you can still find gore if you look for it. gore is about flesh (as metaphor, but flesh regardless), whump is about suffering. there is frequently no metaphor to be had, or what is there is diaphanous and possibly accidental. i've seen several posts to the effect of 'we've lost weird sex in fandom' but i've seen what people do to vash's pussy on twitter. i think we've lost something else entirely. the weird sex remains, however cloistered by the architecture of a failing website inherently hostile to search and archival functions. the naked edginess (rawness? (is this a joke about flesh)) of whump is, for better or worse, not really a current part of the fandom ecosystem. i cannot remember the last time i saw an anime boy cut himself.

and again, maybe that's a good thing, but again, i doubt it. shockingly, i would not describe the broader internet populace as 'more mentally and emotionally healthy than 2014'. the word i would use is probably 'worse'. just worse. just like so much worse that any attempt at a similarly overlong retrospective on that sea change would be eligible for a hugo nomination by wordcount. discourse around the state of the very online public's comfort with discomfort focuses primarily on depictions of sexuality (for what i think are valid reasons, see blood knife's epochal 'everyone is beautiful and no one is horny') and, yes, that is often a proxy for other, parallel critiques, but, but, but. but is that the only place where boundaries on acceptable expression have narrowed? or just the one with enough intracommunity disagreement to be notable? there was for a period of time a lot of talk about hostility towards 'ugly' mental illness, the ways it often manifests not as easily-digested inaction but as violence, self-inflicted, omnidirectional, destructive. i don't really see that talk anymore. the parameters of what is acceptable in depictions of mental illness have been quietly agreed on. ask yourself, 'could you put this in a buzzfeed listicle?' and there you go.

returning to modern trigun fandom as a counterexample to heyday homestuck trends, i think of the way vash's near explicit suicidal depression (manifested as alcoholism, avoidance, a tendency to self-sabotage, a general late-series vibe of being unsafe to bring near a bridge) is generally ignored, or alluded to only in contexts where his yaoi wife can kiss it all better. the combination of suicidal depression and physical mutilation leads in a straight line to a door with nothing behind it, a vacuum left unfilled. i think of being 15 and scrolling past an mspaint comic about the minutiae of dave strider's abusive home life, at the time only implicitly canon, through a reading that much of the fandom still rejected as ooc. a picture of bro holding dave as a child, blood on the frame. bruises. straight red lines on #FFFFFF. let me remind the homestuck newcomer that this guy wasn't an explicit abuse victim in 2014. these agonies were whole-cloth inventions. do we still do that? we still invent new shapes for alien dicks (the trigun/homestuck comparison serves me again) and apply questionable interpretations of bdsm dynamics to whatever m/m is in fashion.

zooming out from my adolescent focus on dave fanart (yeah yeah i know i know he was everyone's favorite whaddya want), i wonder if commercialization plays a role, because it always does. that question is never answered in the negative. you weren't allowed to sell homestuck merch at cons. no one was making money off homestuck fandom. is that why it was like that? i don't know. i have laundry that i should be doing.

[tepidblue]

nominative determinism is an extremely funny concept that i will now choose to believe in. like andrew hussie (creator of homestuck) is a kookmin (ship btwn two members of bts) truther. oomf just said it on the tl & i was like, ykw? i’m going with it. and then oomf shared receipts & i chuckle like a little demon because it is just so silly. like u created a biblical length tome & now ur scurrying arnd in the dirt like the rest of us & people had a melt over the gcf in tokyo (seminal kookmin artefact)

oh yeah the nominative determinism thing. this should be a separate post but boo. so i have a dutch friend who tells me about dutch things. dutch told me about farmers with tractors blockading the highways because the government wanted to phase out meat production subsidies and switch to more environmentally sustainable agriculture. dutch told me about the bizarre education system that feels more like dante’s inferno—six different levels and if you’re not in lock-step with dutchness, you do get penalised. do not ask me to repeat it because i do not know how to write the different levels and i will get sad for refugee families who don’t know how to cow teachers into letting their kids be in a higher academic level. i am not dutch and therefore not familiar with spellings. dutch has told me things about the political system that look very charming to me from my perch. the party with the nazi joke chatroom leak was rank though. the dutch government has made some nice anti-dog mill laws. if it is not clear that i am not dutch then i am opaque.

all of this to say, i was aware of the netherlands before f1 (march 2023). oh!!!! i also know the dutch word for like, sex things & i had a riot of a time repeating them a lot. i really get why people learn those terms first when acquiring a new language via osmosis! me too!! except they kept their mouth scrupulously clean so now i can’t even swear outside of, gestures, this language.

okay nominative determinism. it’s this thing where your name suits you to, like, a freakish degree in a major aspect of your life. max’s name is so perfect for him. he is max. to the nth degree. maximilian. maxy max. he’s pushing maximum. he’s been flat out from day one.

now let’s go dutch. basically verstappen (ver-shtah-pHEn) (dutch emphasized the double p & i’ve done a poor approximation of the sound. i am so charmed by it. dutch also says monaco askew but i cannot pin it down. i would probably be less charmed had i been, in some way or another, been colonised by the dutch but here we are.)

i saw a girl who had impeccable pink pantheress vibes. i do need to tell her next when i see her. this isn’t related. neither is the next thing i’m going to say: i really like the moon. but it is not very tangible through my phone camera so i have to look above every night and i miss when i was younger and it followed me through the window as we went home. i can’t remember when the small details came and went until it was something alien altogether but the moon still remained. i like the moon even if my horoscope makes me out to be someone fascinated with the taboo and terrible. i am, but in a distant fashion. not that i think i’m better for the distance or not in the midst of it but in the way of this isn’t my thing but i do think it is interesting and while i thoroughly enjoy learning about it, i do not think i’d enjoy participating in it. whatever the taboo is. there are taboos i’d balk at, certainly.

verstappen essentially means misstep in dutch and i took ages to get here but i do think jos should be banned from the paddock ❤️ & honestly verstappen suits max very well but also kumpen would’ve been textually grittier & added more whimsy to his first impression. more spring to the consonants. but jos exemplifies the missteps of the surname handed down to him by his forefathers. i hope he calcifies and becomes less than rot; that jos.

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Cactus, chia, camellia please?

cactus ⇢ something you’re currently learning (about)?

league of legends, thanks @phosphoricbomb

the items in that game apparently don't just give you a powerup to a single stat, they change multiple stats in intricate ways, it has the complexity that only a game utterly destroyed by competitive play would have

also @oli-the-cat has been sharing pokemon leaks, im not interested in playing scarlet and violet unless someone tricks me into thinking it's good (still a possibility)

i've never regretted playing a pokemon game though, i even had a great time with pokemon sword, which has to be the most lazy and unpolished AAA game i've ever touched (thankfully never played FO76)

chia ⇢ what’s an inside joke you have with someone else?

"It's the only thing I had left!" from The Last Witch Hunter. Has become a hell of a meme with the Gregs (another inside joke). (if one of you is seeing this, never inform me, because if you do, i am deleting this blog. Never let your IRLs know your online accounts.)

Every time something gets destroyed in a movie. "Not the xbox! It's the only thing I had left!" Utter chaos.

In the one Christen Haydensen movie "Jumper", there was a northern guy who played xbox and had an incredibly thick accent and was super rude so we sometimes imitate his voice too. At the same time as the Last Witch Hunter meme. See above.

As for Loobaloobi, every time there is a black cat with wide eyes it's either a Cheesoid (my cat) or a Tipsy. If there's a... tall thing with four legs that can pass as a dog, it's a Fiesta (Mifil's dog).

Homestuck discord inside joke: :/

camellia ⇢ what were you like when you were younger? do you think you’ve changed a lot?

Younger Tipsy (aka icanhascheezeburger) was so amped up and upset all the time. She was targeted greatly at school and basically everyone knew her name. She wanted to fight so bad, but couldn’t throw a punch to save her life. She had a strong sense of justice, and was condescending as fuck to those she thought had wrong opinions. She walked out of school a lot, but at some point after months of no school, decided to go back and hunker down until finishing. She never did her homework and she drew all over her notes, and when she got into Adventure Time, she drew Adventure Time all over the notes instead of Dragonball Z.

University! Tipsy, aka the sometipsygnostalgic that made this blog in 2015, she realised that even if everyone around you is nice, they are still hard to be friends with. That fucked her up. And she was an anxious wreck because university was hard to pay attention to, she was lonely in halls, and then went into an unfortunate cycle at home. So yeah in my early 20s I was no longer overconfident, instead I sort of became a mess that apologised for existing.

Present Day Tipsy knows a lot more about boundaries and how to be nice to other people but also has retained much of the nerdiness of Baby Tipsy and Uni Tipsy. So in many ways I'm the same but in other ways I'm glad my wisdom stat has gone up so much, it was basically Zero back then, and now I know how people are supposed to treat each other.

[oswednesday]

the first dream was like, i was at a pool party Already pretty scary! and having a good time despite all that when the Cops show up and the whole thing is my middle brother had killed someone in a really extreme sort of way and i got to yell at my mom about all the times i begged for anyone to intervene and get him help with anything and now we're here instead i woke up like wugh, fed the cats sipped some water went to the bathroom then fell back asleep

the second one was i was like in a queerplatonic thing with one of the artists i watch vlogs of, i dont Think i feel anything for them in the Real but maybe i do? it might have been just someone selected to make this dream like Work? or maybe i think theyre cute but wasnt really thinking about it?? ah! handwave to be back on topic, i got a headkisses and Stuff and i was holding tight to the gift and they were all like youre only with me for the Stuff arnt you like teasing and i was like no of course not heres the reasons why <-but that kind of thing my one once really close ex-friend would do like oh youre a parasite (despite defending me publically when other people would say that!) then we got back to eat at their place and it was pizza which i have a complicated relationship so i was like okay got to eat fast but i could sense that despite the date thing being set up the way it was that i was overstaying my welcome their partner came in and started to talk to me and that was nice in the dream but the dream!artist was getting aggro about it in the way this ex-friend always wanted me over when her boyfriend was around but we were NEVER allowed to interact, like she was always like on me about what i wore and how i was sitting and things like that like ??? so i recognize that this dream i was processing those feelings in like a much cooler environment and maybe some Im Jealous Of This Person I Dont Know shaking out of my system

the third dream i was participating in like a cross country event (something i did in my tiny youth because i thought it meant we would travel and had no adult in my life to say otherwise or give a shit about what i was signing up for like i was in 1-3 grade age range is how much of not a shit was given about me level of neglect here) but i got lost and it was miserable hot and buggy and i built up the courage to ask a bunch of kids playing on the side walk if they could go get their parents for me who came out and i asked if they had any deet and they were like oohh youre doing the marathon and they got stuff out and a drink and the commotion brought both neighbors out and i got snacks too and everyone was like congratulations! you can do it! and so galvanized i was back at it and there were a lot of people i was avoiding in like a Gut Check sort of way who wanted to walk with me like thisll turn into a gorn if you do that! kind of warning

then the route cut through a school building that was like an amalgamation of all the schools i ever been to and i was hanging out with two girls who i think we could have been friends if i was the way i am now back when i was younger we were always like adjacent friends but like how much i was neglected along with my behaviors and desire to scrap barrels prevented us from being closer and we talked about that in the dream like ghost of christmas past but ghost of high school past sort of style i suppose gfgdfg

then i was at a setting i dream of sometimes its a little like a fusion space stage, theatre that was large and accommodating desire in my head, the nightmare tends to be not that i dont know my lines but there simply isnt enough time to, i cant find my booklet and i dont know when i go on and i know no one will assist me, but in this one that one ex-friend i mentioned was uncharacteristically helpful with that and we were hanging out with a girl i knew from a different school reading like horoscope stuff and being like #homestuck about it and when we went on we did like improv basically to the circumstances and that faded into like i was a detective but sometime the detective's partner when i was the partner it was like oh god what are my lines situation when i was the detective i was like exploring the area making like Decisions like do i jump in the water to grab these documents do i wander these back alley markets alone? they were lovely pumpkin falls stuff but my phone was full and i had no money and one of the table clerks looked like one of the old men in my child life who were weird perverts to me that my dad and his then girlfriend allowed (like it was her dad) so i just let him talk at me and ignored my discomfort but it wasnt inappropriate talk it was about his wife and his like gourd garden

while this was all going on it was Also interjected with me sitting in like a townhall sort of meeting of like politicians and people who are like Go Team about politics and they were talking and i finally interjected in this big speech that i didnt flub up once and then after i was done i just left into the hall where the theater was, like this great wide hall with white tile the whole thing glowed like from the ceiling lights like the interior of a mid00s scifi shoot

then the final dream was this really involved like magical system where i was attending school and i had like two friends we got sent to like an Untamed Reality and made friends with the Monsters after foiling some scheme and when we got back to our reality like the school we tried to enroll into someone like rich kid rival had been spreading rumors about us, but we had to attend a different school cause despite saving the world or whatever we got exiled/expelled/outlaws from all the damage we did but we had to like get back in to get training so we would be able to stand a chance against the Big Bad but the headmaster of this school was fine with me he wasnt fine with my friends in like a Ew What Are Those bigotry sort of way (one was a snail operating like a humanoid mech suit) and another was like a wood elf but wood elves were more animaloid like shifting beast parts on the body depending on the local fauna and i was like a Wizard from a Respectable Family fallen from Gracecore and i was like well fuck you whatever lets go see if the bloodmages let us in their school, and these ones were like the war/battlemages and he was like one second wait at leeeeast try out our entrance exam as a way to trap us cause he realized the last second he could at least get some money out of us as ransom to different parties or like kill us and get a reward

but when the monsters came out it was like the wood elf knew how to deal with like a savage war hound and had it like on its back tail wagging ready for pets and then a troll came out and we were like hey is he even paying you? yeah man you should be getting paid, and we broke like the magic dome up and out of the area and thats where That dream ended

my final dream was like being stuck in like a hoarder room but i was doing something lewd in front of a mirror despite that, well! then i woke up and was like! okay ! <-starts my day

[thefandomsociologist]

Finally started my reread of homestuck that i've been wanting to do since 4/13 this year that i had to delay first to classes and then to cosplay

i've managed to get to the start of act 4 so here's my thoughts so far:

the first few acts are not as bad as people used to complain about. like i get that for a lot of people the trolls were a big reason that they got into it or how they convinced other people to get into it but the early acts are still funny and weird

like would you say the first few chapters of a book sucked because they hadn't introduced your fav characters yet? or because they didn't include your favorite scenes? the first few acts set everything up for the later acts. without them we wouldn't be nearly as invested in the story by the later acts so those would not have nearly as much meaning

it's weird to now be over a decade older than the starting age of the main cast. i really forgot that the beta kids are 13 at the start of the story

it's jarring how often the r-slur for intellectually disabled people is used in the first few acts. it makes reading some of this quite uncomfortable

but overall it's reminding me of all the things that happened when i was younger and reading it for the first time. it amazes me how much happened while i was reading it but also how much i've grown since homestuck ended. it's also unlocked a lot of pleasant memories of the times i shared with the small portion of the fandom that existed in my home town like singing 'You Can't Fight the Homestuck' in the school parking lot after anime club with one of my friends while waiting to get picked up and just feeling very happy but also a bit awkward even though we were the only ones around

[smiegrin]

11 15 26

I'm putting this under a readmore because I'm uh... thorough in my responses here. X]

11: describe your ideal day.

Waking up (without an alarm) at 8 am, wishing my girlfriend good morning with a kiss, washing up. After that, catching up on internet friend stuff until lunchtime around 11 am. After a simple lunch (sandwiches, probably, even in my ideal world X]) I could spend the early afternoon on a single-player game I'm playing though (or maybe watch my girlfriend play something) until I switch to doing something more creative like draw or code until dinner. (probably something more elaborate, like helping my girlfriend make "yuri pasta" (penne rosa) from scratch or my mother's signature "Sanette Spaghetti"). Then me and my girlfriend can play/read something together for the evening (and get to other yuri activities as our uh... mood may dictate)

15: five most influential books over your lifetime.

OOGH I uh... I might have a hard time pulling out five... I better try, though.

"Cat Wishes" (the full title is longer). I mark this as the most impactful because it's what really convinced me that I needed to transition. It's a simple, earnest, wish-fulfillment furry-adjacent light novel that really got me to realize I wanted to be... something else. That "sometimes it's worth asking for what you want," as the book puts it.

"Substitute Familiar" (same author). Same vibe as above, but I read it second so the impact had already been made. Turns out I'm a huge sucker for "transgender person gets her egg cracked wide open before she even knows what's happening."

Book of Mormon (TECHNICALLY***. Also the Bible and stuff). I'm not like... recommending reading it. This list of "books that influenced my life" just wouldn't be complete without the thing that I spend two decades reading almost every day and that shaped my approach to theology and spirituality, even if I've uh... distanced myself somewhat from that group since then. Like, some of my first posts on this blog were talking about "#ldsconf", but now I'm on that "#that is yuri" and "#do that to me" posting era. X]

[Brony Fanfic I think is best left in obscurity] (ask for a link and I'll send it if you really wanna know) I remember it was filled with lots of... hallmarks of bronydom from the time, but it was the first story that was like... that direct about how weird it was to be at a stage of life where my "bOdY iS cHaNgInG" and I'm suddenly interested in girls in a new way but there's all kinds of other baggage that's attached to those feelings? Not the least of which was, at the time, the pressures of masculinity? And everyone around me is really cagey about explaining any of it clearly? It resonated with me so well at the time that I would recommend it to everyone who asked me at the time about my favorite book.

DK Scientific Encyclopedia (I... think that was the title?) I don't know if it really counts as a book for the purposes of this ask, but it's gotta mean something about the kind of kid I was that, when assigned to read something EVERY DAY that my parents had to sign off on, my instinct was "I don't wanna have to pick something new every day or week, so I'll just pick the biggest book my family has" and then actually enjoyed learning about atoms and electricity and analog/digital signals. I think I was 7. I was definitely younger than 10. If that doesn't count then uh... Homestuck. Because Homestuck is just a domino that keeps coming back around to so many big things in my life.

26: how would you describe your gender/sexuality?

Short answer: transfeminine lesbian

More complicated short answer: girl-adjacent nonbinary girl-liker

Kitchen sink answer: I'm like if a girl was also kind of a raccoon who isn't REALLY a robot but likes to think of herself that way to frame her behavior and past. Oh and I wanna live like a yuri light novel.

My "real" (thorough) answer: if we take the mean value of what many people call "girl" in the two-dimensional space formed by the cross of Masculinity and Femininity, my gender lies in a space that projects into low-masculinity, medium femininity, but in fact lies in a higher-dimensional location (as all genders do) that can be found navigating a short distance along orthogonal basis vectors "domestic creature" and "machine". That space that is not quite otherkin but is nonetheless intertwined with the desire to be cared for like a strange pet raccoon but also linked to the symbols of being jailbroken from a dogmatic hivemind of normalized thought patterns and behaviors prescribed as "worthy". (a similar expression can be found using an alternate vector space, feminine x profane x solarpunk). Oh and kissing girls. I just... (gestures widely to the multidimensional space that lies in my own gender neighborhood) really REALLY like girls.